Coupons are marketing instruments commonly delivered in form of a ticket or coupons that can be exchanged for a fixed financial discount or rebate when purchasing a product. They are issued by manufacturers of consumer packaged goods or retailers for sales promotions and customer retention.
Today coupons can be distributed via e.g. the following channels: Mail (print and electronic), printed media like magazines and newspapers, internet, mobile devices like mobile phones (via short message service SMS or multi message service MMS).
The coupons are identified in the back-end of a point-of-sale (POS)-terminal through a unique identification number which is commonly printed as number and in form of a one-dimensional or two-dimensional barcode onto the coupon. Upon redemption the coupon identification number is registered at the retailer for further processing either manually or with a laser scanner.
Electronic coupons that are stored on mobile devices are becoming increasingly popular with the increasing usage of digital media. They offer the advertisers the opportunity to address their customers individually.
Across different channels advertisers have different means for measuring the effectiveness of their advertisement channels. The channels might include: Location based services, e.g. fixed terminals or fixed stations for providing advertisement, printed media, broadband TV/radio, in game advertisement, in content advertisement, video on demand, internet, idle screen advertisement, email, SMS/MMS.
Across all advertisement channels advertisers can measure the effectiveness of their advertisement using sampling techniques, customer surveys or by evaluating the turnover increase over the advertisement period. On the internet and for location based advertisement, incentivized consumer actions provide a back channel for advertisers. Broadband TV and radio often provide call-back phone numbers as back channel.
In case of coupon based advertisement campaigns, when coupons are delivered via SMS/MMS, internet, direct mail, and printed media, advertisers can measure coupon conversion rates which are determined from the number of coupons distributed divided by the number of coupons redeemed. This method also provides some information for the advertisers about the time until coupons were redeemed. Depending on the advertisement channel, the accuracy of the received information might be limited.
Currently, coupons are either in a specific physical form (paper coupons) or stored as static data (two-dimensional 2D-barcode, UPC (Universal Product Code) barcode and unique coupon number). With new technologies like Near Field Communication (NFC) coupon transfer is easier and more data can be transferred. However, the introduction of NFC coupon services is facing hurdles, since the number of NFC enabled devices in the market is limited.
Thus, there is need for an improved method and system for generating coupons and for a device to handle coupons.
This object is solved by a method for generating electronic coupons according to claim 1, a coupon holding device according to claim 11, a system for generating an electronic coupon according to claim 16, an electronic coupon according to claim 23, a computer program product according to claim 24, a computer readable storage medium according to claim 25, a method for transmitting an electronic coupon according to claim 26 and a coupon holding device according to claim 27.
Further details of the invention will become apparent from a consideration of the drawings and ensuing description.